He seemed honestly floored by the statement. She didn't understand how he could play stupid in both contexts. Either he had no clue what she was talking about when she called him Dante, or he had no clue as to why she was asking what to call him other than Dante. There was just no winning with him. She stepped farther into the room, headed straight for the bed but he moved forward too, stopping her advance short.
"Don't touch those," he demanded, his voice a little threatening. "That's all I need, for you to shoot yourself in the foot."
"Are you going to answer my question?" she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest to stop his gaze. He hadn't taken his eyes off of her chest since he'd turned around.
"I thought you were convinced I was this Dante?"
"I thought you said you weren't Dante?"
He frowned over at her, walking back over to the dresser to put back the bottle. The glass clinking against the other empty bottles set of a short chorus of wind chime like sounds that she found oddly pleasant given the situation.
"It's not important, I wont be in town long enough for it to matter," he sighed, glancing back over at her as he peeled off his leather jacket.
What kind of idiot did he take her for? First he said that he didn't know her and now he couldn't even make up a fake name to go by to prove that he really wasn't Dante. How lame ass was that? She tried not to stare as he pulled the jacket off, tossing it onto the bed to strategically cover up his guns as if she were some kind of three year old that was going to go after them the moment he turned his back. She hadn't planned on touching them in the first place, she just wanted to get a closer look at them was all. She hadn't been able to really look at him in the alleyway after becoming obsessed with his face, but not that he was standing in front of her without his jacket on she realized he hadn't been wearing a shirt the entire time. His entire upper body was sculpted, something that she had only ever seen in magazines. No one was that perfect.
"What is your name?" he asked, smirking at her when he realized she was staring.
She quickly looked away, crossing the room to the window, peering out over the short expanse of roof. There were times when she could recall the day he fell off of it so vividly, her leg still burned from scrapping across the shingles. She rubbed her leg absently, reaching up to unlock the window.
"Why should I even bother telling you if you can't even tell me your name?" she countered, pulling the window up to let the cool night breeze in.
"Guess you got a point. Sorry for asking."
"You know, I've never seen a real demon before…"
She could hear him chuckle behind her, the weapons on the bed clinking together lightly as he sat down on the bed. She couldn't turn around and face him, feeling slightly crazy for the things that were bouncing around in her skull. Demons were real? There had always been that small shred of doubt in her mind, but now that was completely gone.
"What? Have you only ever seen the fake ones? I don't want to be the one to burst your bubble, but you've probably seen more real demons than you think you have."
"How could I see them without knowing it? I would remember seeing something like those things before."
"Demons come in all shapes and sizes, lady. Not all of them are exactly what they look like…"
She nodded absently, reaching out to touch the windowsill with the tips of her fingers. Her left hand looked nasty where she had scrapped it on the brick wall, she hadn't wrapped the wound in anything after leaving the shower and she could see where the blood was starting to scab over slightly. Dark maroon, almost black in some places. It had been a long time since she had looked at blood so closely, her eyes fixed on the small dots as if she were hypnotized by them. It reminded her of the house, the trails left all over the floors and stairs. The blood that seemed to cover every surface indicating that there would be no survivors.
"Evie! Where are you going, get back in here!" her mother called, leaning out the front door as Evie jogged up the walkway toward the gate.
"Come on mom, you said I could head over there as soon as my plate was clean, and it is clean!" she whined, stopping short of the gate, dropping her arms to her sides in irritation.
She and her mother were mirror images of each other. The same hazel eyes that were more green than brown, the same caramel colored hair, but Evie couldn't stand to keep it as long as her mothers. The only difference between them was her mother's frailty. She always looked pale and sickly and whenever Evie questioned about it her father would simply tell her that her mother was "tired".
"By clean I mean in the dish strainer, not clean of food!" her mother laughed, waving her hand out the door. "Go on, you'll be of no use to me if you keep thinking about going over there."
Smiling brightly, she dove through the front gate, sprinting down the sidewalk as fast she could without falling flat on her face. It was still early in the morning, only around nine, but she knew that Dante would get up if he knew she was waiting for him. As she looked both ways, twice, before crossing the street she caught a glimpse of several other kids standing around on the side of Dante's house, trying to sneak a peek through a window. There had been several times when she caught the teenagers from the next street over trying to beat the twins up, calling them bastard children because they didn't have a father. That was when she had learned to fear Vergil. He'd picked up the biggest rock he could find and slammed it into one of the boy's head with the most deadpan expression she had ever seen. Even as blood splattered over his hand and all over the boy's face he didn't even flinch. It took Dante several moments to pull his brother away and their mother had to have a long talk with the police about it.
"Hey! What are you doing, get the hell away from there!" she shouted, rushing up the front walkway toward the twin's house, glaring angrily at the teenagers.
"Shit it's his girlfriend, run!" one of the boys shouted as they scattered like roaches into the next yard over.
Evie stood on their front porch, glaring out over the yard until she was certain every one of them were gone before she turned to knock on the front door. Tapping her feet on the porch to the beat of a song she head heard on the TV earlier that morning, she waited for their mom to open the door. She'd gone over the song three times in her head before she realized that no one was coming to open the door. She could hear Dante's voice in the back of her head telling her just come right in whenever she wanted to and while she thought it was a little rude, she was curious to know why they hadn't answered the door yet. Their mom was always up with the crack of dawn it seemed.
"Ms. Eva? Dante?" she called out, cracking the door open slightly. If the front door was unlocked, they were home right? "Vergil?"
By the time she had her entire head in through the door she realized that there was something seriously wrong with the scene she was looking at. Dante's house was always spotless and at times it was so clean she joked about it looking like they didn't live there at all. But all of the furniture in the living room was turned over, tossed this was and that with several of the cushions torn, the coffee and end tables shattered to pieces. Without thinking, she shoved the door open, hearing glass scrape across the wood flooring as she stepped into the house.
"Ms. Eva! Dante!" she shouted, feeling her heart slam into her rib cage like a sledge hammer.
Trying to disturb as little of the debris as possible, Evie navigated the front hall, her eyes trailing over all of the shattered photo's of Dante, his mother, and Vergil that had once been hanging on the walls. Now they all lay in shambles on the floor, scattering glass like a mine field waiting to harm someone if they stepped the wrong way. Their house was laid out in much the same fashion as her own, the archway that lead into the kitchen was smeared with something that caused her to jerk to a stop, handprints in deep maroon swept into the kitchen as if someone were trying to escape from something.
"Ms. Eva…" Evie muttered, her teeth chattering as she peeked around the corner into the kitchen.
It looked just as trashed as the living room, dishes, blood, and what looked like dinner strewn around the room like some kind of violent food fight had occurred, and there laying the middle of the floor was a mess of blond hair covered in blood and broken china. She could see where the woman's fingers were digging into the tile, caked in blood where there were shards of broken glass sticking out of them, her clothing tattered and torn. Even with her laying face down in the filth, Evie could see that the woman wasn't breathing and while it wasn't something she had ever seen before, she knew enough of death to know Eva was no longer there.
Her heart bucked in her chest when she realized if Eva was dead, what had happened to the twins? Spinning around on the glass she nearly slipped, rushing back out of the room toward the stairs. The second floor of the house wasn't in any better shape, in fact, to Evie it looked worse. There were great claw marks dug into the walls leading down the hallway. Their house had three bedrooms and a half bath off of the hallway, the first room that she came to was an office. The old desk was overturned, the books that littered the shelves around the room were thrown everywhere with pages torn out of them. And if at all possible, there was even more blood here than there was in the kitchen downstairs. She didn't see how if they had killed one of the twins in this room, how there would be any more blood than with Eva. They were so much smaller than their mother…
She was about to turn away to check the next room when she saw a tuft of white hair peeking out from under the overturned desk. Lurching forward, she slid across the pages scattered over the floor on her knees, reaching under the desk to try and pull whoever it was out.
"Dante, Vergil! Get up!" she shouted, scraping around blindingly under the desk for whatever she could find.
As soon as she felt skin she latched on, ducking her head down as far as possible to peek under the desk. She couldn't see his face, but the blue shirt he was wearing was enough to tell her it was Vergil. She had to lay down on her stomach to stretch her arm all the way up under the desk, laying her hand over his chest to see if he was breathing. Just like his mother, he was completely still and covered in blood. Sitting up she drew in a deep breath, trying not to look at the blood that was now covering her hands as she fumbled around through the debris for the phone. She had remembered seeing one on the desk before, so it had to be somewhere in the room now. She found the cordless phone buried under a pile of blood soaked books, the numbers already smeared with blood as if someone had already tried using it to call for help.
"Come on, come on!" she snapped, her bloody fingers slipping on the numbers as she pressed the emergency number.
"9-1-1 emergency, what is-"
"You have to help me!" Evie shouted before the man on the other end of the line could even get the words out. "They killed my friends, help!"
"Ma'am calm down, can you tell me where you are?"
"The whole house, there's blood every-"
A sudden crash behind her caused her to jump, dropping the phone into the piles of books as she glanced out into the hallway for the cause of the noise. She could faintly hear the operator calling out to her, but she was on her feet, rushing down out into the hallway thinking that Dante had somehow managed to survive.
"Dante? Dante, where are you!" she nearly screamed, rushing down the hall to the next bedroom.
It was their mothers room, the huge bed was big enough to sleep almost six grown people comfortably, and unlike the rest of the house, this room was surprisingly clean. There was only one long trail of blood that lead from the hallway where she was standing to right under the bed. She couldn't see what it was that had fallen over and she thought for a moment that it could have just been something that she had knocked loose on her way up the stairs.
"Dante…are you in here?" she muttered, stepping around the trail of dark blood smeared over the floor as she moved toward the bed.
Dropping to her knees slowly, she placed both hands down on the floor in front of her and lowered herself down to look under the bed. She choked back a scream as she came face to face with Dante. He was laying on his side right under the edge of the bed, his eyes were slightly open, the once bright blue orbs were now dull and graying. There was blood smeared over his face, covering most of his red shirt and jeans. For the first time since she'd stepped foot in the house she felt tears well up in her eyes, reaching out with one hand to brush her fingers over his cheek. He was already cold.
"Dante…Dante, wake up," she whispered, knowing he could just get back up like he did every other time he got hurt. She'd seen him walk away barley scratched from accidents that should have killed him. This should have been no different. "Dante, please."
Ignoring all of the blood and gore, she slid down on her stomach, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and pulled him back out from under the bed, cradling his cold form in her arms. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the sounds of police sirens wailing through the streets, but she just sat there with him in her arms, refusing to believe he was gone.
She could remember the looks on the faces of the paramedics when they found her, she was crying hysterically, and it took them several minutes to pry Dante's body out of her arms. A police officer carried her kicking and screaming back down the stairs and out the front door into the waiting arms of her mother. The neighbors were all gathered in their front yards, the teenagers from earlier looking on with terrified expressions. Even over the sirens and shouts from inside the house as they found the bodies of the family, she could hear everyone outside whispering. A word that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Demons.
"Hey, you hear me?"
The sudden voice beside her snapped her out of her vivid memory, bringing her almost crashing back into her own body as if she had somehow managed to leave it to experience the pain from her childhood all over again. Her fingers were shaking on the windowsill again, her eyes stinging with tears. She jerked back away from the window, finding him towering right next to her with a worried expression on his face.
"Where did you just go?" he asked, tapping the side of his head as if he somehow knew she had been somewhere else in her brain.
"I thought you would just get back up like you always did. I…didn't think you could die. But there was so much blood. I'm so sorry…" she gasped, cupping her hands over her mouth as she spoke.
"Shit, don't do that," he growled, watching in horror as tears spilled down her cheeks.
He ran a gloved hand through his hair roughly, obviously unsure of exactly how to handle her sudden emotional outburst. There was no possible way she could just stand there and pretend that he wasn't someone she had loved and lost. Taking a shaky step back away from him, she turned to leave the room, trying to see through the now steady stream of tears. She had taken a total of two steps when his strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, halting her instantly. His body was warm against her, a heart shattering contrast to the cold body she could remember clinging to all those years ago. For a moment he just stood there, molded to her body like he was another part of her, before he slowly turned her around. His hand snaked up her back, burying itself in her hair at the base of her neck and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck.
"Look, I don't know what you saw that day, it couldn't have been easy for you and I'm sorry…" he sighed, his breath coming out as more of a stagger, like he was having trouble controlling it. "I am the one who's sorry, Evie."